


The Preferred Candidate

by bad_pheasants



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: ABO in Space, Accidental Self-Harm, Alpha!Kara Danvers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Assigned Mating Program, Assigned breeding partners to friends to lovers, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drug-Induced Sex, F/F, Flashbacks, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Generation Starship, Human AU, Hurt/Comfort, Knotting, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Omega!Alex Danvers, Omega!Maggie Sawyer, Past Rape/Non-con, Polyamory, Pregnancy, Smut, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 14:27:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19402198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bad_pheasants/pseuds/bad_pheasants
Summary: ABO in space, a government repopulation program, and a really awkward assignation that somehow turns out really well.TWs for: References to past non-consensual drug-induced heat/rut; A scene in which a character has flashbacks to said non-consensual drug-induced rut (though not explicit descriptions of the sex that occurred). There's also past and "present" accidental self-harm (due to the flashback).Archive warning for Rape/Non-Con included for the flashbacks/character backstory,notfor the "present-day" interactions between the characters.Warnings around consent that you might expect for an ABO- and government-breeding-program-related fanfic with smut also apply.





	The Preferred Candidate

The lab is comforting. It’s messy—not in an unhygenic way; the lab techs here work with blood samples, pheromones, grow and manufacture bacteria and compounds needed for medicines that, since they’re in space, don’t grow anywhere else. This is the public-facing culmination of that work: Racks of test tubes and queued samples line the shelves and counters, set next to equipment so that when the tech on duty is done giving Kara her shot, she can go back to whatever work Kara’s presence interrupted. It’s the level of messy that Kara’s come to associate with a fully engaged technician. 

“So, here for an alpherone shot, huh? Congrats.” The tech offers Kara a crooked smile and welcomes Kara in. Kara doesn’t know any of the staff on this side of the fleet, but she knows that smile: The kind of “congratulations” offered to new parents, but tempered, because Kara isn’t really going to be a “parent” in the same sense that most betas think of it. But this tech has probably seen more people in Kara’s position than Kara has herself. Still, the “congrats” sits wrong on her. 

It’s another reminder that people are usually more excited to be parents, and not just… weird and confused. 

Kara knows the protocols for this shot—she has them practically memorized, has been looking at them practically every day since she got her notice that her number came up in the lottery—but she feels a surge of awkward uncertainty. It’s not like she’s here completely by choice. She offers the tech a smile she hopes betrays none of that. 

“Thanks. Yeah, my number came up.” She’s aiming for aw-shucks. 

Thankfully, the tech laughs, and Kara laughs with her. 

“Alright then, let’s get you good to go.” The tech gestures to the chair in the cleared area near the door

The tech gives Kara the talk while she gives her the shot. Kara clings to the tech’s manner, warm and personable, but still professional, and the lived-in warmth of the lab, trying to ignore the syringe. It’s not that she’s scared of needles, though. 

She’s heard it all before: _Your contribution is invaluable_ , _This is the best way to rebuild the population_ , and really, it’s hard to not see what they see; it’s just _rut_. She’s going to come a lot and if she wants to, that’s all her involvement has to be. All this—the protocols, the explanations—is just to give some structure to a process that’s by nature chaotic and emotional. 

Because there’s nothing simple about this, Kara thinks. It’s always going to be simple if you’re not participating in it, and it’s never going to be simple if you _are_ participating. 

Except, part of her argues, it _is_ simple. That’s why there are protocols around this. They’re stupid, but they _work_. If you follow them. 

“If you start noticing any signs of an allergic reaction, either in you or your partner, let the attendants outside know right away. They’ll have steroids on hand and they can get you to medical. 

“Any questions?” 

Kara shakes her head. 

“Alright. Go get ‘em, tiger.” Kara flushes at the ribald humor. Another reminder that this isn’t something she’s supposed to feel weird about. 

And with that, Kara is handed over to an attendant (read: guard) to be escorted (read: moved) to the heat wing of the frigate. 

//

The personable, if inappropriate, treatment ends the moment she’s handed over to the attendant, and from then on, it’s painfully obvious that this is a government program first and foremost, and they’re not really interested in her per se, but in the chemicals her body is producing right now. She’s just a vehicle for them. 

So she feels a bit like a sack of potatoes being transferred somewhere else under guard. It’s not even like they think she’ll try to run off; it’s like they think she might… come loose and roll away, or something. 

It’s not Kara’s _first_ rut, she has a little more self-control than that, thank you very much. 

She goes through the material from the handbook they gave her when her number came up on the roster—she remembers a surprising amount, all things considered—rehearsing what she’s going to say, how she wants to play this. 

As they make their way to the heat wing of the frigate, she feels a familiar restlessness start to set in, an itchiness under her skin—a heat, uncomfortable, a little humid, and a flush rising in her cheeks and throughout her body. 

They drop her off at the room she’s going to spend the next three days in and station themselves outside (not that they need to; there’s a camera there anyways, to “ward off intruders”—the door locks from the inside). Kara watches door _clunk_ shut. Slowly, almost regretfully, she reaches out and pulls the lock down and into place. 

She can smell the scent of someone else in here; female, clean. She saw the figure sitting on the bed, up near the top, but she didn’t look before turning around. They sent a picture of her with some details. Kara isn’t ready for her to be real yet, though. 

Kara takes the last moment of relative privacy she’ll get in this to inhale, scenting her partner. There’s a thinning layer of industrial-grade masking agent over the top of a scent that Kara can only describe as “intoxicating”. It makes her feel taller and lighter. Makes her blood flow easier. 

There’s a tinge of something else beneath it that draws an animal focus from within Kara, magnetic and inexorable and not wholly conscious of why or what drew her attention. 

Finally, Kara realizes she’s been standing there staring at the door for far too long. It’s time to face her partner. She rubs her palms on her sweats, musters the best smile she can, and turns around. 

And stops. 

The woman sitting up at the head of the bed looking at her wryly through a half-curtain of chin-length dark-red hair, slouched back against the wall, ass on the pillows, boots on the covers, knees drawn halfway up and forearms resting loosely on them, is definitely the person whose picture they sent her. Kara swallows. Point for them. Her features are keen, the slender sharp angles of her body, the cut muscles and the way she’s sitting, all casual physicality, all smirky focus, like an aura around her. 

And if the—expensive—muscle and physical confidence weren’t enough of a clue, Kara’s partner—Alex, the summons said her name was Alex—Alex is wearing BDU’s and a tank top and oh. Oh. She’s a soldier. 

They’d told her that too in the summons. “Military - Navy”. Good on them for not being wrong, Kara thinks faintly. 

She looks more delicate in person, the part of Kara that’s not bluescreened decides. She also looks deadlier in person. Sharper. Kara is suddenly very aware of the fact that she still can’t do more than three pull-ups in a row. Part of it is just genetics; she’s tall and not as muscular as her alpha cousin, but she’s still broader in the shoulders and heavier in the muscle than a lot of other people, as an alpha. It gets her raunchy comments from her coworkers back home. Suddenly, though, she feels about as fit as a teddy bear. 

But the caloric and atmospheric requirements needed to maintain a human in ready fighting form are high, on a spaceship with limited raw materials. As someone who works in Biosciences, Kara literally studies this. For all her physical “gifts”, Kara’s mind has always been more valuable. And they limit what people are allowed to do, past what’s needed to maintain order and keep people from going crazy in a small space in the middle of the void. “Above average” is still close enough to average to get the descriptor, and Kara is suddenly acutely aware of that. 

And Alex looks like a subject in an artificial grav experiment. It’s not like there’s much fighting that actually happens, for all that they’re crammed in close quarters. It’s just the way it is. So the people allowed to be… this… get pulled into all kinds of projects; some are engineers and dedicated to low-O2 environments. They’re favorites for spacewalking or planetary expeditions. They’re guinea pigs in things like—what Kara mostly does—gravitational or structural experiments. Any experiment, really; they’re highly calibrated (and therefore expensive), but also more resilient. 

Almost without exception, their alpha and omega members are preferred candidates for the repo (repopulation, not the Old Earth “repossession”) program. Granted, once Kara’s mom (the governmental owner of the program) had figured out her daughter was an alpha, she’d almost had Kara drafted into the Navy on the spot. Going into science, like her father, was her way of rebelling. Something that happened to her every six months didn’t define her abilities and it wouldn’t define how she could “contribute”. 

Right now, Kara kind of regrets that choice. 

What stops Kara—apart from the sheer shock of realizing she’s somehow been placed with someone who’s very likely a preferred candidate for the program—is Alex’s eyes, the way Alex watches Kara’s every move. Sure, maybe it’s a soldier thing; but it’s not an omega thing, at least not as far as Kara knows. There’s the hint of a smirk there, although her face is mostly neutral, like she knows Kara would go down easy. It makes Kara feel a little bit like _she’s_ prey, and Alex is a circling predator. 

Kara had tried to, she doesn’t know, prepare herself to try to smooth things over. She imagined—she doesn’t know what she’d imagined. Someone more like her, maybe. Someone who has doubts like her. Who’s low-key having a crisis, like her. 

It’s been all of sixty seconds and Kara realizes acutely that this is not how things are going to go. 

Kara can’t move. Alex’s face looks almost boyish; far too sharp and delicate to be masculine, but still—pretty. Like a pretty boy. The easy confidence and casual physicality and the military uniform feel completely at odds with the scent that has Kara’s mind so… suppressed. But—maybe strangely—the longer she looks at that not-quite-smirk, the less at odds it all seems. Things start clicking into place. 

Alex looks Kara over. Something flickers through her expression—maybe a frown, maybe dismissal. It’s gone in a flash. 

“You’re not what I thought they’d send.” 

//

Alex’s remark doesn’t sound like a compliment. Kara doesn’t know _what_ it sounds like. 

Kara flusters. “I—I’m sorry, I’m—I’m in the right room, honest, I—“ _Get it together_. “—I’m Kara.” She finally finds a foot. One. One foot. Better than none. Right? 

Alex’s eyebrow quirks. “I know.” She says, like it’s obvious. Because it is. 

What are protocols? 

“Right. I know that.” Kara looks away and rubs her palms on her sweats—sweaty palms; also an early-rut symptom for her—all her scripts deserting her. “Um.” Maybe not all of them. “It’s nice to meet you?” _Nice_ is not a word Kara would ever use to describe this situation. 

Except for the view from out the ship’s window. A faint but gorgeous view of a nearby sun, and a series of planets in between it and the frigate. It’s a beautiful place to spend three days, Kara thinks. Space is a premium on board this ship. 

What she wouldn’t give for a convenient asteroid to hit the window right now. 

Alex’s eyebrows climb towards her hairline. She doesn’t answer. 

Mortifyingly, Kara keeps trying. “So, um—“ She had a list. She absolutely had a list, but it’s on her comm, in her boot, and she is _not_ going to fish it out and read off it, except she can’t actually remember any of her prepared questions. Her prepared, reasonable questions, and her polite, reasonable “Nice to meet you”s and “Do you have any questions for me”s, and—

There’s a thought. 

“—I don’t know exactly how much information you got from the summons, but—did you have any questions? For me?” This sounded so much more reasonable on paper. 

Alex’s eyebrows stay elevated. “Just one. Are you quoting the handbook?” 

Kara doesn’t have an answer, because she one hundred percent is. Everything she’s saying was in the handbook. She stammers, mouth working, half-words coming out. 

“Oh my god. You read the handbook. That’s… cute.” 

An asteroid. Just… right in the bulkhead. Whoosh, out the window, into the void. Problem solved. 

Alex’s tone pricks something soft in Kara’s chest, though, and Kara feels herself frowning and crossing her arms. 

This situation isn’t pleasant, but she’s _trying_. These are all reasonable questions and they’re there to help. And Alex is over here acting like she’s Kara’s aunt Astra at a dinner party, making fun of some smarmy bureaucrat her mom is trying to make friends with. 

Alex is _not_ as sharp as Astra. 

“So did you, clearly.” She grasps for any shred of dignity she has left. She regrets it the instant it the words leave her mouth. She sounds like she’s six, getting in an argument about _“first the worst, second the best”_. 

Alex frowns. Kara cocks an eyebrow at her, expression hopefully daring Alex to protest. She tightens her arms across her chest for good effect. 

Internally, she’s going, _Oh my god. Oh my god._ She’s always had a tendency to pick fights outside her weight class; her mom says Kara gets it from her. It hasn’t tended to serve Kara nearly as well as her mom, though. 

Shockingly, Alex deflates and looks away, out the window, expression annoyed. 

First-timer, Kara thinks. Just like her. 

She decides to press her luck. “Look, I know this isn’t the norm for either of us. I just… want this to be as comfortable as possible.” 

Alex’s eyes flick back to Kara and the look in them is disdainful. “Are you a virgin?” 

“What? No. I’ve had partnered ruts since I presented.” _With betas_ , she doesn’t add. 

Yeah, this would be her first time with an omega. 

Alex doesn’t seem impressed. “They weren’t with omegas, were they.” 

Kara starts to stammer out an answer that’s a blatant lie, but Alex only needed half that time to confirm her hypothesis and let out a sharp, short laugh. 

“Oh my god. You’ve never been with one of us before.” 

Kara stumbles over her words. “I’ve been with betas.” She’s not sure how to say pithily that it wouldn’t be her first time being exposed to omega pheromones in rut, either. 

But that’s complicated. The pheromones were synthetic—concentrations of the hormones meant to induce and intensify rut in alphas, to increase dopamine and oxytocin levels, at far higher levels than Kara would’ve experienced with any omega—and Mike hadn’t told her he was going to use them. He’d thought it was funny. 

As experiences go, Kara’s painfully aware that it’s both “relevant experience”, and so different as to not be relevant at all. It was, to put it kindly, an altered state. 

Alex seems to have sobered after that first shock of surprise, and shrugs. “We’re easier to please in heat.” Kara flushes deeper and looks away, made uncomfortable somehow by the statement. “What? It’s true.” 

“You’re still… You still deserve the effort.” Kara’s face is so red with embarrassment right now. She wants to melt through the floor and die. What a horribly first-timer thing to say. 

Alex looks at her like she’s lost her mind. Kara would strongly consider throwing herself out an airlock to put an end to this conversation and how thoroughly her ass is being dragged, but she stands by the conviction, however embarrassingly articulated. Sure, maybe an omega is _receptive_ , but it’s not— _effortless_ , on the alpha’s part, and— 

Maybe she spends too much time on Driftblr. 

Alex shakes her head. “Of course they paired me with a goddamn romantic.” She doesn’t look entirely displeased as she looks Kara over again. Just… mildly annoyed. 

Kara’s jaw drops in shock at the epithet. “I—I’m not—“ She sputters. “I’m not a _romantic_.” That was uncalled for. 

Alex raises an eyebrow, her expression daring Kara to contradict her. Kara has to look away. 

“That’s not _romantic_.” She grumbles. “That’s just being polite.” 

“ _Polite_.” Alex laughs from the bed. “They definitely assigned you to the wrong bed this round.” 

Kara starts to reach the limit of her embarrassment again and tip over into irritation. “Neither of us wants to be here,” She says, voice sharper than she means to be. Alex looks at her, frowning, maybe a little startled. Kara takes a deep breath and tries to gentle her voice a little; it mostly just comes out flat and disappointed. “I just don’t want this to be worse than it has to be.” She looks out the window as she says it. 

When she was with Mike, and the synthetic pheromones hit her… Kara didn’t _lose_ time, exactly—it was all one long blur of pleasure and sweat and skin and _deeper deeper deeper_ and the orgasms were _amazing_ —but things were fuzzy, and the loss of control was nothing she’d ever experienced during a rut before, and it had been _terrifying_ , freefalling like that, not knowing why. It was only afterwards, when Kara was staring at her scratched-up arms, her hands that seemed so steady and inexplicably _hers_ again, that her ex had decided to tell her. 

And no one had been _hurt_ (her ex had been extremely sore, but laughed and said it was worth it, while wincing), but to this day, Kara doesn’t really risk going into rut anywhere with omegas around, or really even other people, apart from her rut buddies, who she’s met with beforehand, and had a chance to talk things out—what they were into, what their limits were, what she was like in rut, and if that was what they wanted. Until her name came up on the repo roster. 

She’s so used to explaining herself to people who will never really relate. She thought… maybe it’d be helpful, what she’d learned from those conversations. After all, she’s not an omega, but she knows _something_ about being on-display for betas, or having something about her nature be attractive or useful to or exploited by them—and that’s what they’re doing right now, really. 

Instead, she’s been awkward and fumbling and inept, and mostly, she thinks she’s come off as condescending. Which, she didn’t expect this to be _easy_ , but this is even more of an epic failure than she’d anticipated. 

She’d wanted to—to set her partner at ease. Let them know it was going to be okay. She wanted to go in there and tell them that she would take care of them. She didn’t want them to be at each others’ throats. She’s _heard_ about the state some of the omegas start out in, especially if their heats are artificially triggered, as cool as Alex is acting right now. She doesn’t think this has to be awful. 

Maybe that was just chauvinism, thinking she could somehow do all of that. 

Alex is silent for a long time. Kara keeps staring out the window, waiting for another smart remark. 

It never comes. 

//

They don’t speak for a while after that, and Kara lingers near the door, not wanting to come any closer, acutely aware of the weirdness of the situation, not willing yet to risk saying something else and breaking the fragile truce between them. She slides down the wall to sit on the floor. She looks everywhere but Alex; the bare metal-and-grate pattern of the walls, the door leading to the bathroom, one of the few places of actual privacy either of them have—it’s mostly just a toilet and a sink and a giant shower/bathtub/jacuzzi. She looks out the window and finds the constellations. 

Slowly, that flush she felt coming on earlier starts to deepen and settle in, and there’s a twinge, almost like a cramp in her stomach, an ache and a feeling of fullness as blood starts to migrate and other things start to be produced. And either her senses get keener or Alex’s masking agent is wearing off or both; there’s the scent of arousal, and finally—heat. Subtle, at first, and not really like anything else Kara’s ever smelled. It conjures up primal things; buried things. She’s painfully aware of Alex’s presence on the bed, like a star from close-up; Kara could swear she feels heat radiating out over the room from Alex’s skin, raising the ambient temperature. 

Kara feels her own rut coming on like a runaway train; she wants to jump up, walk around, pace, _move_. She wants to go over to the bed, to Alex, to press her body all up against Alex’s, nuzzle in against Alex’s neck. She wants to bolt from the room, slam her body into the door until it gives. She feels almost strong enough to. It feels precipitous, the way she can feel the force of it moving towards her, warping and pushing everything around it. 

She realizes she’s pushing her shoulders back against the wall, like she can dig into it, anchor herself on it, like she can absorb that solidity and coolness. She forces herself to relax and breathes. Closes her eyes. In. Out. Kara can smell Alex’s heat. Her instincts sharpen, a familiar sense of softening running through her at the scent of need, rich and musky and almost incongruous with Alex’s BDUs and tank top. There’s a part of her that melts, into that scent, kneels before it, loses itself in it. And then everything starts to feel like she’s standing on the crumbling edge of a cliff again. She flexes her hands, close-open-close. Breathes in and out. 

She shouldn’t feel—she didn’t expect to feel sick to her stomach. Hyper, maybe. Overwhelmed. Her usual rut combination of horny and lonely, unless she‘s in the middle of things with her partner and too wrapped up in them to feel anything but wholeness and movement and connection. She didn’t expect nauseous. 

She knows this won’t be like that time with Mike. The only artificial hormones are the alpherone and omegen used to kick off the heats. There’s no exogenous oxytocin or dopamine in play. It’ll be... subtler than that. 

Which is a net good in theory, but right now, Kara isn’t sure if it’s not actually worse. 

Weirdly, the experience with Mike made normal omega pheromones—at least the hints she’s caught—soothing and mostly emotional in their effects by comparison, when she’s not in rut—like being able to know that someone, somewhere close, was in distress, and feeling this tug to go _look_ for them, or a sudden and inexplicable softness or affection towards someone, instead of the all-consuming desperation and instinct and undeniable _need_ , or the way her brain clicked over to _animal_ so cleanly and sharply Kara could almost hear the machinery slide and shift and lock. 

Right now, though, with her rut coming on—it feels like they’re two sides of the same coin. She can feel it like she’s at the lip of a precipice, and she knows exactly how far there is to fall. 

She thought she wanted to set her partner at ease, before she came in here; reassure them it’d be alright. Maybe she just wanted to reassure herself. Maybe she wanted them to know someone was there to catch them, too—and maybe that was a huge assumption on her part. 

But maybe it was just a projection, and all she wanted was for someone to catch her. 

//

Kara stays almost completely still, except for when the memory is too visceral, too real, and she twitches, physically breaking out of it. 

But that’s part of the problem. The memory is in her body. 

It’s in her skin, echoes of the hypersensitivity, like she needed to be touched everywhere, all at once, and not being touched was like drifting in space, unanchored, not warm or cold, just drowning. But being touched, even gently, was like being scraped with sandpaper, the input lancing like electricity through her body. It’s in her head, dizzy spiraling darkness—just the edges of it, but the memory of it is enough to have her sweating, pushing back into the wall behind her until it hurts. 

It’s not something that she can experience in increments. Remembering any of it is remembering all of it: The blind need, the _More more more_ , more feeling, more fucking, closer, closer, more falling falling falling, plummeting from a huge height without anyone there to stop her and remind her where she is and—

“Kara.”

Alex’s voice, from far away. 

“Kara. _Kara._ ” 

Kara jolts back to semi-consciousness. Alex’s voice rasps from the bed. It sounds so far away: “Kara, you’re hurting yourself.” 

Oh. 

Kara looks down at her arms. She’s wrapped her arms tight around herself, digging her fingertips into her upper arms until her fingertips have gone numb. As she unsticks her fingers, joints stiff and aching with the sudden release of tension, she sees scrapes and little crescent scratches, and spots of blood. She looks at them from far away. This isn’t her memory, she tries to remind herself. There’s a huge gap between the memory humming in her body and this moment—in desperation, in pitch, in intensity. 

But she still feels that moment curling over her like a shadow, like a wave about to break. 

Alex’s voice pulls her back just enough that the room comes partway into focus again. Kara sees the planets, serene outside the bulkhead; the gleam of the distant sun. They’re under sunlight, Kara thinks. Like they’re on a planet. Not floating in space. 

She looks at Alex, feels the twinges of pain in her arms, the pins and needles in her fingertips, and it crKaraes in on her: Her heart rate, the sweat prickling out along her spine, under her arms, the electric prickle running up the back of her head, the messy swollen wet hardness she can feel between her legs. The gulf of distance between herself and everything else. 

_It’s here._ Her rut is here. And with that realization, this weight that’s been pressing down on her, this shadow over everything, breaks, and it’s like realizing that she’s been waiting for lightning when she was already smoldering and catching fire. 

Alex’s face has appeared at the end of the bunk, concern and hesitation plain on it. Kara doesn’t have it in her to recover, or pull herself together. She doesn’t even know how she’d start to. This is not how she wanted her partner to see her. 

Alex is biting her lip. “Come here.” She looks almost as surprised to hear herself say it as Kara is. Her look firms over, though, and she repeats herself. “Come here.” 

Kara’s arms come uncrossed a little, but she doesn’t get up. 

“Come on.” When Kara only partly unfolds, Alex sighs. “I’m only gonna say this so many times.” Her voice has only a trace of her earlier impatience, though. Kara manages to get to her feet and start moving towards Alex on the bed, unsteady and shaky, both from being folded up on the floor and from something else. Alex moves back slightly to make room for Kara on the bed. She even holds out her hand when Kara’s close enough to crawl onto the bed. 

Alex’s hand is warm in hers, and Kara almost has enough of her wits to be self-conscious about her probably-sweaty palms, but Alex doesn’t seem to notice or care. And as she gets closer to Alex, Kara cares less and less, too; just being close to someone else, feeling someone else’s hand in hers, steadies her, pulls her back to the present. 

And as she gets closer to Alex’s scent, that eases something in her, too, even as it turns off some basic sensibility in her brain—it makes it easier. Alex’s scent isn’t the obliterating darkness from the artificial omega pheromones; it’s _Alex_. A whole person, the scent of their daily life on them, of their emotions and their anxieties and their want, in addition to that thing that makes time move differently, makes Kara feel like she’s falling, makes her feel small and desperate and lost on that bed. The way they whisper that the body next to her is the answer, is everything. _Alex’s_ body is everything. 

Kara lets Alex guide her up the bed and to lie on her side. Alex, thankfully, spoons up behind her. Kara feels something in her relax at the full-body contact, the tension bleeding away proportionate to the surface area in contact. Alex’s arms wrap around her. Kara lets her arm rest on Alex’s. 

“They didn’t give you omega pheromones, did they?” Alex asks, voice warm and soft behind her. “I’m not smelling any.” 

Kara shakes her head. “Had an ex,” She manages. “Thought it was fun to wear them without telling me.” 

Alex’s breath hisses out and her body goes tense. Kara stays still, waiting for something to happen, for her to get angry or the sky to fall. Alex’s arms tighten around her. “I promise this won’t be anything like that, okay?” 

The sincerity in Alex’s voice startles Kara. 

“Why do you care?” That is… not what Kara wanted to say. It comes out cross and suspicious. 

Alex is silent. “I’ve seen what that does to people. That scratching... that’s not a normal rut.” 

“I know.” Kara says, voice soft. Maybe she should be angry—Alex has been nothing but “too cool for this” the whole time she’s been there, and _now_ she decides she wants to be nice?—but Kara made such a mess of things at first, and just being close to Alex is soothing in a way that she can’t articulate with words. “I just... Yeah.” 

“Your ex is a douche.” 

“He had his good moments.” She’s not sure why she’s defending him. He _was_ a douche. That’s why he’s her ex. 

Alex makes a noncommittal noise. “They all do.” 

Point. 

”Thank you.” Kara manages after a moment. She feels like she should say... something. 

She can hear the frown in Alex’s voice. “For what?” 

“For... bothering.” 

There’s a sound that could be a sigh, a snort, or the wind leaving Alex’s lungs. “Yeah, well, I’m a dick, but no one deserves to think that _that’s_ how heat is supposed to go.” 

Kara feels herself smile. She can work with that. “Thanks.” 

//

Kara has to hold her legs open rather sharply to keep from accidentally putting pressure on her pseudo-knot—not that it’d feel _bad_ , per se. The exact opposite problem, really. It’d feel far too good. 

She doesn’t really know why she’s holding back so sharply, but she is. She just... knows that Alex doesn’t seem to be all that into this. That takes the enjoyment out of this for her. 

As it is, she’s getting hard with no help, an annoying feeling of _fullness_ somewhere down inside her that paradoxically makes all the blood in her body rush to her knot, and Alex’s presence makes her feel wild. Alex’s hand splays wide on Kara’s belly, the flat plane of her navel a few inches above where her knot emerges. The burning heat of Alex’s hand eases the cramps, but it feels torturously good—a combination of barely-contained want and possessiveness, and self-restraint hanging on by shreds. 

With Alex’s hands on her like that, Kara is so hard. Tenting her sweatpants, throbbing and feeling so big, compared to what it had been—what, an hour ago? Two? She’s sweating and her breathing is coming rough. Staying facing away from Alex is torture, but at the same time, Kara doesn’t dare move—and part of her doesn’t want to. Alex’s arms feel so good around her, like the anchor she’d been trying to find earlier, and with Alex’s hand on her, _controlling_ her, little shifts in pressure and angle that Kara can’t help but respond to—

Alex’s words come back to her. _I promise this won’t be anything like that_ ; _If someone had given you more than a handbook_ ; _That’s what heat is like_. 

Kara moves with Alex’s subtle direction; Alex’s breath is hot on Kara’s neck, her teeth and tongue sharp and electric on Kara’s ear. Kara gives her everything in return; her compliance, her responsiveness, gets hard for her and leaves herself open. 

Alex’s nails scrape and dig into the delicate skin of Kara’s navel; Kara feels her hips twitch, the muscles down inside her twitch. Alex’s fingers press, hard, her hand fisting in the waistband of Kara’s sweats and dragging in a slow, messy not-quite circle, knuckles digging. Kara’s hips grind with the motion, and Alex grinds her hips against Kara’s ass. Kara feels aching pressure, and a pulse of heat, and then precum spilling out the tip of her knot—something that before now has has been at least a little annoying, because it’s messy and potentially volatile, like... uranium. 

And maybe some of her exes were kind of into that, or thought it was literal _life-force_ , like some kind of Earth-Nostalgic spiritualist. But right now, she realizes, she _feels_ it—it means something different. It’s always felt vulnerable, getting messy like this, not being able to hold herself together in her ruts. It’s always been a spectacle, too; something unusual that she played out for her beta partners. 

But it doesn’t feel like a show of alpha primal nature for some detached beta observer, right now. She _wants_ ; her body is aching with it, she feels full of it, pounding in her veins with her heartbeat, spilling out of her into Alex’s hand, Alex’s _greedy_ hand, part of her thinks. Alex doesn’t smell detached. Alex understands her want. 

Alex’s hand loosens after a moment. “I’m gonna touch you,” She says, voice low and breathy. Kara nods. 

Alex’s hand moves down and loosely wraps around Kara’s knot through her sweatpants, sending shocks through her body, more blood pounding there. The fabric feels scrape-y, a little, but the closeness of her hand feels so good, and the warmth. She feels her knot spill a little more, vulnerable and wanting, under Alex’s hand. 

“ _Alex._ ” Kara pants. “ _Please._ ” 

Alex makes a sound and slides her hand inside Kara’s sweats. Kara groans when she feels Alex’s hand directly on her knot, feels herself pulsing in Alex’s hand. She thrusts into Alex’s grip on pure reflex. She’s drowning in the scent of omega and want. Alex’s hand is like hot water closing over every part of her except her mouth and nose: So exquisitely good. She melts into it. Her knot pulses against Alex’s grip, a little more spilling out of the tip. Alex’s hand catches the slick and smears it down the shaft of Kara’s knot, making Kara’s thrusts into her hand even easier. 

Alex gets the way Kara wants. The way her body moves and the heady, electric-magnetic feel moving from the crown of her head down her spine—silencing her thoughts, leaving her her body and her instincts—it makes _sense_ to Alex. The way Alex reacts to her proves that. Alex’s teeth scrape Kara’s shoulder. Kara’s whole upper body relaxes. 

Alex is pushing half-up over her, hand still on Kara’s knot. Kara half-falls onto her back and Alex towers over her, eyelids heavy, eyes dark, taking Kara’s face in, falling to Kara’s mouth. Kara feels a surge of victory, or satisfaction—Alex doesn’t look worried, or scared, or any of those things Kara wanted to help her avoid, could feel roiling under the surface in the room when she entered it however long ago. There’s just want in her gaze, taking taking taking, and Kara feels something in her body respond to that, giving itself over to that, over to Alex. Kara raises her chin on instinct, lips softening, eyes closing. 

Even in heat, Alex seems to like kissing, which sends shivers and heat running down Kara’s spine. Kara feels weak, but in the best way; weak like this is exactly where she should be, in her bed with Alex. In Alex’s bed, Kara’s brain revises that statement, looking at Alex looking down at her with something like possessiveness or satisfaction. Alex’s nest. Oh, fuck. 

Yes, part of her thinks. She should be wherever her omega wants her. 

Alex does something with her hands and suddenly Kara’s sweats are down past both their knees. Kara shucks her shirt and bra and Alex takes her hand off Kara’s knot to unbuckle her belt and start to unbutton her BDUs. 

Kara finds herself sitting up, pausing Alex’s hands with hers, and she’s not completely sure why, until she sees Alex’s expression: The surprise, the soft part of her lips, the uneven flush of her skin, the shiver of her breath and the jump of her pulse in her neck, raw and responsive. Her hands stop, though, coming to rest lightly over Kara’s, and their eyes lock. 

“What’s it like?” Kara hears herself say, and isn’t sure where in her chest that rawness is coming from. Her hands are steady under the weight of Alex’s, but she can feel a tremor down in her bones. “What’s it supposed to be like?” 

Alex’s breath hitches and her eyes flash, and one of her hands fists in Kara’s hair—longer than hers, halfway down her back when it’s loose—and drags Kara up to kiss her again, searing. Alex’s fingers slip back underneath Kara’s, a deft movement undoing the button on her BDUs and then pulling Kara’s hand to the zipper. Kara’s free hand hovers uncertainly at Alex’s hip. 

Alex pulls her mouth away from Kara’s, and offers Kara her neck instead, the scent there, and Kara feels it, that current she’s been so afraid of, on some level, tugging her in, insistent. Kara nuzzles in, kisses, opens her mouth—all the things she’s felt her body bending towards. It’s even better than she thought: Alex’s body loosens, her legs spreading and her chin tilting further up. The tug of her fingers in Kara’s hair tightens as Alex leans into her. Kara picks up the slack. 

When Kara’s fingers find slick, welcoming heat, and bury themselves in it; when Alex shudders and tugs Kara even closer, and that pure pleasure radiates out of her skin—

Kara answers it. Kara abandons herself to it. She lets it close over her and lets the scent, the sound, all of it—lets it guide her. Lets Alex guide her. Being caught is irrelevant when all of it is bound up, beginning and ending, in Alex. 

Of course that’s where she lands. 

//

Kara looks up from where she’s buried her face against Alex’s neck, needs to look at Alex’s eyes—her own are full of something she should probably hide, part of her thinks, something like fear or hope or embarrassment over her performance. 

Kara finds Alex looking back at her with something like surprise on her face. Kara isn’t sure if it makes her feel less self-conscious, or more. 

Alex reaches up to Kara’s face, fingers tracing clumsily. Her thumb finds Kara’s lips, and Kara parts for her. A sort of hazy unfocus comes over Alex’s expression, like she’d surfaced from the need for a moment, but the pressure and fullness of Kara’s knot has her tranquilized, and she’s slipping under again. 

Kara, acutely aware of the fact that she’s still spilling inside Alex, that Alex has her tied and caught, and Kara feels _held_ and submerged in the best way possible—all the way under—can’t blame her. 

//

“You were right.” Kara says, a little later, blankets pulled half-up and over them so that they don’t get cold while they’re tied. Her head rests on the pillow next to Alex’s ear. “I’ve never done this before. With an omega.” 

Alex’s fingers drag up and down her spine lazily. It’s incredible, Kara thinks, how Alex’s touch can send ripples through her _sanity_. “Well, lucky for you, knowing how to use your hips is a universally applicable skill.” Kara blushes. “I won’t tell anyone,” Alex says, that wryness softened somewhat by an inexplicable affection. “Promise.” She holds up her pinkie. 

Kara bursts into giggles when she sees it. “Pinky-promise?” She brings one hand up to join Alex’s. 

Alex’s face wrinkles, even though she definitely started it. “Nerd.” Her pinky links through Kara’s securely. 

“You said it first!” Kara protests. 

“You didn’t have to say it out _loud_.” 

“Sorry I embarrassed you in front of our huge audience.” 

“Hey, Alpha Taurii did not sign up for this.” 

“I know, really? In front of his salad?” Kara thinks she’s starting to get it. Alex likes being the contrary one. Kara can live with that. It only describes half of Kara’s family. 

Alex laughs despairingly. “You did not just quote a thousand-year-old meme at me.” 

Kara shrugs, flashing her brightest smile. “Sorry. And it’s five hundred, what are you--” 

Alex’s pinkie has suddenly unlinked from Kara’s, and her nails are digging into Kara’s ass and dragging down hard as her hips grind up into Kara’s, and Kara loses her composure at the reminder that she’s so deep inside Alex, clutching at the sheets and groaning as she feels Alex’s body around her, all welcoming heat and velvet-y slickness and Alex’s _heartbeat_. 

“You better be,” Alex shoots back. 

She might kill Kara if Kara’s stuck with her for three days. Kara might be okay with that, though. 

//

They end up talking about things, of course. It’s impossible not to. About themselves, mostly, sharing weird stories about what it’s like to serially date betas or what Alex does—she’s a biomedical engineer, when she’s not on call and available as a resource For The Good Of Humanity—or random observations. They skirt around the real questions, though: What they’re here to do, is this something Alex even wants—Kara, she’s pretty removed from the process, if she wants to be, and looking at her family history with the program (her dad and her aunt being preferred candidates, omega and alpha respectively), it might seem like the answer would come fairly easy to her. 

But it doesn’t. 

Kara is candid about her history. Alex is a lot more closed-off, but that’s something Kara doesn’t think needs pressing. It’s personal, and vulnerable, and in the short time Kara’s known her, Kara has figured out that Alex likes neither of those things. Still, Kara doesn’t get the vibe that she’s all that happy about this, or that she even plans to stay involved in the kid’s life—which, government repopulation program, they make that optional. They have to, to avoid an out-and-out mutiny. 

But Kara hears what Alex says about herself—engineer, soldier, spacewalker—and thinks that’s what a lot of soldiers around here do, if they’re not one of the guards who strut around in fancy uniforms and harass people—they keep the ships running, twenty-four by seven, right alongside the Biosciences and Engineering teams—not that day length matters, when they’re in space. 

Alex is valuable just as she is, Kara thinks, without having to reproduce. Able to crawl into small spaces, agile, strong. They’re not exactly brimming with skilled engineers, either. But what does Kara know; she’s just a scientist. Not a politician. 

At least the whole child-care thing is taken care of, government repopulation program and all. If Alex wants to, she never has to see her kid again. 

And it’s none of Kara’s business, really—but it weighs on her mind. 

Finally, near the end of the three days, Alex says it, almost offhandedly: “You know, a lot of people in the service look forward to this. Kinda like it’s a break from the grind.” One corner of her mouth twitches briefly. “I kinda like being on call.” 

It hits Kara in the gut. 

She can pass it off as “mandatory service” all she wants, or make a joke about the pheromones being so thick she could cut them with a knife. It feels really, _really_ good, and she’s happy that she gets to finally understand this part of herself, and that it feels not horrible; like she’s more whole, even—just like part of her had hoped, she realizes. 

But at the end of the day, this wasn’t a choice either of them made, and Kara is being used to do… _this_ … to Alex. 

And maybe Kara’s just soft like that; maybe she can’t spend three days in a room with someone and not _care_. If Alex is going to be happy. Alex is going to be cared for, but—will Alex have _support_? Her dad died in a hull breach related to structural failure in an older frigate when Alex was fifteen, and since then, her mom has had a much more thriving relationship with her wine and her medication than with Alex. 

It’s a nice lie, that they can do this and go their separate ways. But Kara knows Alex won’t accept anything from her outside of the tenuous (and sometimes not so tenuous) alliance they’ve made over the last couple of days. She catches herself biting her lip, wanting to offer—something. She doesn’t know what. But she can imagine Alex’s reaction: The same kind of bemused condescension she gave Kara when Kara first walked into their room and started spouting protocol (badly). 

She doesn’t want to make this awkward. And she doesn’t want Alex to think less of her. Or think that Kara’s asking her out on a date. 

She can’t imagine Alex _not_ thinking at least one of those things. 

//

Alex’s heat starts to ease toward the end of the third day. _Success_ , the Biosciences part of Kara’s brain says. 

That sick feeling from earlier starts to creep back into her stomach, though. 

Alex starts to retreat into herself, and by the morning of what would be the fourth day, she’s gone back to—not quite where she was when Kara first met her, she’s not outright _mean_ or mocking, but she’s withdrawn and quiet. 

It’s time to start cleaning up. Kara can still scent some lingering heat on Alex, but Alex says she’s had enough. And Kara’s rut is mostly spent. The edges of the world are starting to come back into place. 

Kara’s getting her clothes together—the laundry is in-suite, no lines for that for three days is, as Alex would say, “choice”—when it occurs to her sharply that this is probably her last chance to say… anything. _Hey, if you need anything, you can get ahold of me_ ; _Hey, I know this is meant to be a mostly anonymized walking sperm donor program, but I care about you as a human being_ ; or even just pulling out her comm and saying _Hey, I know you probably won’t ever need it, but if for some reason you need to get ahold of me—_

Kara rubs her thumb over the slim shape of the comm in her boot. She sneaks a glance at Alex, who’s gathering her things up similarly to Kara. She can already imagine how it would go. The last interaction they have would sour… everything that’s been good about this. 

They gave her Alex’s contact info on the summons, right? Or, like, _a_ contact number. Hell, if it comes to it, Kara’s mom is the head of the program. She’ll have one of her mom’s friends look Alex up. 

She eases her comm back into her boot. 

Yeah. She can get Alex’s info another way. If she needs to. 

If. 

//

The ship is _busy_ outside of that room, she thinks, even though before this whole experience she felt like it was kind of the reverse; like that room was the embodiment of the quiet and silence of space around them and between them. 

Right now, everything feels intrusive and she’s… off. Her whole rhythm is just _wrong_. She passes at least three people she works with with a grunted half-response, instead of her usual greeting; their “hi”s and “hello”s all take her off-guard; her brain deciphering them only after she’s walked past whoever it was. Normally she could pick her co-workers out of a crowded hallway well before she reaches them. It’s like that momentary grace, that strength and rhythm she found inside Alex—all of that’s gone. 

She doesn’t belong out here, something in the back pit of her brain murmurs. She belongs back _there_. She belongs in Alex. 

Kara shakes her head. That’s just the pheromones talking. 

//

Any of that momentary faith she found in her alpha-ness slowly disintegrates over the next three-or-so days, in between her finally sliding back into her life like she belongs there, and her hormones calming all the way down, her rut spent and satisfied. 

Until she’s sitting in her bunk at the end of the day realizing that—sure, it felt great for _Kara_. But did it really feel all that great for _Alex_? 

It wasn’t Kara’s first time _period_ , but it was her first time with an omega. And after all, it was Alex’s heat. Maybe she would’ve “enjoyed” herself anyway. 

What evidence did Kara really have that she was all that great? That that feeling she remembers inside herself wasn’t just… her? 

It was an assigned mating. They’re not expected to ever speak again. Alex hasn’t indicated she wants to. Why would they ever do that? 

And come to think of it—why was Kara, who, sure, is in good health, has a pretty okay brain, no family history of disqualifying disorders, but nothing _amazing_ , as far as she knows—why was _Kara_ paired with someone like _Alex_? Alex, who, after spending three days getting a _very_ close look at her, Kara feels confident would be the kind of specimen people in her job fight over for their studies? 

//

“What the hell.” Kara corners her mom when she has her shit together. “You had me paired with a _soldier_? Those are high-value subjects, not… prizes.” 

Her mom looks at her, utterly confused. “What?” 

“The military fields the highest number of preferred repo candidates in the _entire fleet_. You’re telling me they didn’t have a _single spare alpha_ for the specimen I just spent three days with?” 

“Kara, I don’t sign off on these pairings. I don’t even have visibility into them.” 

“No, but you have access to the records, and I know you wanted me to go into the Navy the same day I presented. Did you pad my file? Or the roster? Because that is the _only_ way I could get matched with a candidate like that.” 

“What? Kara, the genetic algorithm was never put into production because it was demonstrably biased. It’s a randomized list. Yes, a preferred alpha would’ve had a higher chance of ending up with a preferred omega, but that doesn’t mean it happens every time. And thank you, by the way, for accusing me of unethical behavior.” 

Kara stops, her mind whirling. Yeah, that was maybe not the best thing to do. Still, she just can’t— “It was my _first time_ through the lottery. How did I end up with someone like that?” The fact that it was also Alex’s first time through said lottery doesn’t seem especially relevant, given her probable status. 

Her mother studies her for a moment. “This might be a conversation you want to have with your aunt.” 

Right. Her aunt, the alpha. The stud. The “preferred candidate”. Her _aunt_ is in the Air Force. 

Kara has several cousins—apart from the one she knows and gets in food fights with regularly—that she’s never actually met, or bothered to look up. 

Kara sighs. This was stupid. She was stupid. She went off on her mom. She’d accused her mom of a major breach of ethics around her job; in order to be trustworthy, there has to be a level of blindness in the program. “I don’t need to be treated differently than anyone else just because my aunt or whoever was the star sperm generator for the repo program.” 

Her mom crosses her arms. “That’s fair. But if you can forgive me for pointing out the obvious, you’re related to your aunt.” 

Kara sinks into herself. She’s uncomfortable with this. She always has been. It feels like it’s following her, in spite of her attempts to distance herself from it. 

Her mom’s look softens. “Kara, I’m sorry I put so much pressure on you when you were younger to be part of this program. It was selfish. These assignments are just that—assignments. They shouldn’t follow you anywhere afterwards if you don’t want them to. That’s the whole point of the program.” She looks into Kara’s eyes, and Kara hates how comforting the concern there is. “I’m sorry I ruined that for you.” 

Kara looks away, rubbing one hand up and down her upper arm. “It’s okay. Sorry for yelling at you.” 

“All things considered, I don’t blame you. Before I held this position, I was just as competitive about it as the people who try to falsify their medical records or hack the database outright. And your aunt used to rib me all the time about being a bureaucrat, especially one with a connection to the program. I just… I don’t have anything else to tell you except that ultimately, I’m in charge of protecting the program, and that includes from me. And given that what’s left of the human race is collectively living on the surface area of the state of California, I can see how that doesn’t mean much. 

“If you really want to be sure, I’d suggest that you have someone give you a physical. Do it on another ship with a physician I don’t personally know if you want to. I’m not going to peek, and you know they’ll give you the results to interpret for yourself if you ask.” 

Kara nods, still unable to look her mom in the eye. “Yeah. I’ll do that.” She risks a glance; her mom is looking at her with what seems like bemusement, but Kara doesn’t look long enough to figure it out. “Thanks.” She mumbles. “‘M sorry.” 

Her mom hugs her, trapping Kara’s arm between them. Kara half-hugs back as well as she can, feeling awkwardly vulnerable, like she’s been caught doing something (other than accusing her mom of ethical violations), but not sure what. 

//

A couple months later (Old Earth months, not that Earth goes around the Sun anymore), Kara’s had a long day and is finally about to curl up in her bunk—when the door to her bunk hisses open. 

It’s not her bunkmate. In the doorway stands a woman, small, but her annoyance (or maybe urgency) and sense of command fills the room. She’s pretty, long dark hair and dimples that would probably be really adorable if she wasn’t busy being terrifying. Kara’s chest constricts with panic and she doesn’t know why until she sorts the scents out: Distress, fear, sick, and Alex. 

Kara is on her feet before she even thinks about it. Alex’s friend is jabbing her finger at Kara. “You. Come with me.” 

Kara does. 

//

Alex’s bunk is, of course, on the other side of the ship. She’s been moved to one of the single suites, reserved for pregnant omegas. Kara’s gut twists, remembering everything Alex told her, about how much she likes being on-call. If she’s the one whose distress and sickness Kara can smell on this woman—she still hasn’t bothered to introduce herself—Kara’s guessing she hasn’t been leaving her bunk much, let alone working. 

The woman—also an omega, Kara realizes on their way over—taps some buttons next to the door of the suite, revealing a room with three beds, only one of them occupied, by a small bundle of blankets. There’s a bucket next to the bed. A heartbeat after the door opens, the scent of distress hits Kara, much stronger than before, and Kara realizes she was right; Alex is sick somehow, and this girl, whoever she is, is Alex’s friend. 

Alex’s friend jerks her head in the direction of the bed. Kara swallows and steps into the room. Her stomach churns; she hasn’t seen Alex since their assignment ended, but she’s thought about her almost every day, in some way. It would be a lot even if it didn’t feel so… dire. And since it is… 

Alex’s friend follows Kara into the suite and closes the door. 

The bundle on the bed stirs, then freezes. “Mags, what the fuck?” Alex’s voice croaks from under the blankets. 

“Mags” crosses her arms like Alex can see her. Her glare is just as intimidating and inscrutable as the one she directed at Kara earlier; suddenly, Kara feels marginally better. “You’re sick. You’re not going to get hurt. I brought you a snack.” 

Slowly, the bundle of blankets turns over. Kara crosses her arms over her chest, mirroring Mags, but it’s mostly to keep herself from running over and climbing in with Alex, or looking her over carefully. They barely know each other, she chides herself. She shouldn’t be worried. She has no right. And Alex is clearly not the type to ask for help, if her friend is the one tracking down some random alpha to help her with omega-level morning sickness. 

Which, technically, is just like morning sickness, but like everything about being one of them, a little worse. Skinship is the best way to fix it, usually with the “responsible” party, if absolutely everything else fails. 

Judging by the way Alex’s scent is clearly all over Mags, most things already have. 

Alex’s nostrils flare in distaste, or maybe stubbornness. Kara tries not to let the hurt show. _We don’t know each other,_ she schools herself. _We don’t know each other._

“Get in bed.” Mags tells her, jerking her head in Alex’s direction. Kara looks between Mags and Alex. Alex sighs after a moment, and she nudges the blankets down in a not-quite-invitation, although she doesn’t look incredibly pleased about it. The misery radiating off her pulls Kara in in sympathy. 

Kara tries not to feel incredibly pleased, for her part, or let on how worried she is, how much she wants to wrap Alex up, to not seem too eager as she steps closer. But it’s hard not to feel even a tiny frisson of pleasure, for some reason, at the excuse to be close to Alex again, to have her arms around her, even though she’s definitely sick and probably does not smell fantastic, under those covers. A few steps, and Kara’s shucking her boots and her outer layers and climbing into the bed with Alex. 

Under the covers, Alex’s skin is damp with sweat, and her smaller frame is wracked with chills. Her hair is plastered to her temples, her face, in places. Her skin, already pale, has a sickly cast to it. A whine catches in Kara’s throat. Alex seemed like a lot of things when Kara met her; “sickly” was not one of them. Whatever has a soldier like Alex down for the count, Kara isn’t sure what she’ll be able to do to counter it, even with these supposedly magical pheromones. 

Carefully, Kara settles under the covers, against the chilly-damp sheets. She’s careful to leave herself open for Alex to move close, rather than just wrapping Alex up like part of her is screaming at her to do. Hesitantly, they scoot towards each other, until Alex is settled in her arms, and Kara lets them encircle Alex entirely, Alex’s head tucked under her chin, her face buried next to Kara’s neck. 

After a few moments, Alex lets out a soft breath and relaxes against her entirely. Kara cants her head, resisting the urge to kiss Alex’s damp temple, to squeeze her gently (she’d consider herself “fit”, but not like Alex and Mags, and she’s painfully aware of how squishy she feels by comparison right now), and breathes in Alex’s scent, the acrid scent of distress and sickness, none of that rich musky scent from their shared heat. 

Kara forgets they’re not alone for a moment, she’s so focused on making sure Alex is settled. She startles slightly when the bucket next to the bed scrapes, and Mags is picking it up. 

“I’ll clean up a little,” Mags says. Kara nods. Then, Mags is gone, into the bathroom. 

Kara doesn’t know what to say or do, if there even is anything to say or do. Alex would probably rather that she wasn’t even here. But Alex isn’t doing or saying anything, just huddling against Kara, clammy and too hot at the same time. 

The scrape of something metallic and water-filled near their heads makes Kara jump again. So does the sight of Mags, suddenly looming over them when she turns her head towards the source of the sound. The faintest hint of amusement flickers over Mags’ face, and Kara’s insides do something funny, looking at that crooked smile, bright keen eyes, gorgeous mouth, and Kara immediately feels a twinge of guilt, because Alex is _right there, in her arms_ , and they’re not even dating or anything but she was definitely just having a Moment(™) with Alex, and—

And here she is thinking that being on the receiving end of a flirt from Mags would probably be the best feeling ever. 

There’s a feeling of heat, and a clean scent from the bowl Mags set on the small ledge at the head of the bed. It’s organic and vaguely sweet. Kara cranes her neck and catches sight of a washcloth. 

Alex grumbles loudly and curls into Kara’s shoulder. “Maaaags.” Kara, caught off-guard by Alex’s sudden burrowing, is unable to tamp down a flood of delight at the sense that she’s suddenly Alex’s favorite place to hide.

“Shut up.” Mags shoots back at Alex. She looks back at Kara, who immediately feels guilty again, though her look isn’t unfriendly, so maybe she didn’t get caught. Not that there’s anything for her to get caught at. Nope. “For when she’s feeling a little better.” Mags says to Kara. She winks at her and walks away, letting herself out of the cabin and locking the door behind her, leaving Kara wondering if she could have an aneurysm just from getting winked at by a pretty girl. 

Just as Kara is shifting back into how concerned-but-verging-on-awkward this situation is, Alex says, rather grouchily, “Don’t take it personally, she flirts with everyone.” 

Dammit. 

//

“I hate how good you smell.” Alex says, finally, after they’ve settled into a long, increasingly less awkward silence. Her tone is almost amiable. 

“I’m sorry.” Kara means it, too. 

Alex plucks at the hem of Kara’s undershirt under the covers. Her fingers make the skin on Kara’s hip burn. _Horndog_ , Kara berates herself. “Don’t be.” Alex grumbles after a moment. 

Kara could float. 

A few moments later, Kara feels Alex’s head lift and move, like she’s looking up at something. Kara looks down at her and finds her eyeing the bowl of water on the ledge with suspicion. 

“That is not going on my face.” Alex announces. 

“I didn’t think so,” Kara hastens to agree, ignoring a surge of something that feels strangely like disappointment. But really, why would Alex want that from her ever? She already _knew_ Alex didn’t want that from her, ever. 

Kara finds herself at a loss. The soap and gentle pheromones smell delicious, and it seems like a shame to waste something nice, with the way luxuries (like, say, soaps that require pheromones and natural scents) are rationed in the fleet. “I might put some on myself,” She says, and immediately wonders what the hell it sounds like she’s smoking. 

In her defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time. In not-her-defense, she was probably angling to do something ridiculous and unreasonable like try to convince Alex to let Kara clean some of the grime off her by subjecting herself to it first. 

It sounds even dumber when Kara tries to articulate it to herself. 

Driven by some unknowable and deep-seated compulsion to tell the truth, and also not let luxury go to waste on this spaceship where _everything_ is rationed, Kara grabs the washcloth and wets it gently and presses it to her forehead, then her temple. Alex eyes her with one brow sharply arched. 

“Here. Give me that.” Alex grumps at Kara, hand appearing from under the covers to gesture for the washcloth. Kara hands over the washcloth. 

Alex gently wipes at Kara’s face, paying extra attention to her jaw, her temple, her neck—eyes narrowing in fierce determination, stubborn focus. For her part, Kara goes quiet under her ministrations, the scrape of the washcloth, the scent of the antibacterial soap, sweet and faintly cedar-scented. She’s never had a partner groom her before, so it takes her a long while before she realizes that that’s exactly what Alex is doing, grim and determined and stubbornly not letting Kara do it for Alex herself, even though _Kara_ is definitely not the one who smells like she’s been sick. Kara finds herself inexplicably charmed and exasperated and struck silent with some kind of deep primal emotion she can’t put into words. 

Finally, Alex dunks and wrings out the washcloth one more time, and then scrubs her face and her neck with it, rather haphazardly, compared to the methodical way she nearly put Kara to sleep cleaning her face. Kara feels a conflicted sense of elation and also embarrassment at her own elation. Whether or not Alex intended to, she’s gotten Kara’s scent all mixed up in the clean water Mags gave them, and now she’s getting it—albeit diluted—all over her face and neck. 

Also, any level of “cleaner than before” is an improvement. 

Seemingly exhausted by the effort of preventing Kara from fussing over her, Alex hangs the washcloth over the bar supporting the ledge the bowl is sitting on at the head of the bunk. She nestles close to Kara, burying her face in the curve of Kara’s shoulder. Kara doesn’t really have any choice other than to wrap her arms around Alex, marveling at the way Alex feels under her hands, warm and alive and _close_ again, and Kara didn’t think she’d ever be this lucky, even if Alex does not smell so great. 

Alex falls asleep quickly. But the realization—Alex is asleep in her arms—has Kara tightening her arms around Alex’s smaller frame, nuzzling into her hair, barely managing to avoid pressing a kiss against the side of her head. 

She’d been determinedly avoiding the persistent empty ache in her chest, and now that it’s eased, she can drift off to sleep and put it aside even more fully. 

//

“I need a shower.” Alex announces when she wakes up—feeling better, presumably. Her nose wrinkles as she looks at Kara. “I don’t need help with that.” 

“No, no, I didn’t think so,” Kara hastens to agree. She keeps talking, trying to change the subject. “I can go get some new, um, sheets, if you want?” 

Alex looks suspicious, but agrees. Kara practically teleports down to the laundry closet, all but gasping for breath when she gets there. She grabs a bundle of fabric that’s the appropriate size, gets back, and realizes she forgot the sheet itself, and only brought the comforter and pillowcases. She goes back to get the sheet, and then starts stripping the musty sheets off the bed. 

Kara hears the door open but doesn’t really process that that means Alex is back in the room until she turns around and there’s Alex, wearing nothing but a towel, wet hair pushed back from her face, looking apprehensive. 

“Um, I need to get some clean clothes out of...” She nods at the dresser across the way. 

“Oh! Right.” Kara laughs. “Sorry, I’ll just—“ She moves to the side, conspicuously and determinedly looking away from Alex as Alex walks within arms’ length of her. Even in a roomy cabin, space… tends to be small. 

“You’ve seen me naked before.” Alex observes dryly as she walks past. Kara can feel the warmth of her body, extra-warm from the shower. 

“Right, yes.” Kara wants to die inside at the memory, mostly because of her body’s reaction to it. She frowns. “But that was—for an assignment. I’m not gonna just... _ogle_ you.” 

Alex seems amused by that. But, Kara notices, she doesn’t drop her towel, either. Instead, she moves back into the bathroom, and closes the door, and Kara feels like this is logical, but also—she would be okay with Alex being naked around her. 

She would. She could totally handle it. 

Yeah, Kara doesn’t believe herself, either. 

//

“So.” Kara takes a deep breath when Alex has gathered herself and—predictably—decided that she feels good enough to go back to work. Kara hadn’t really planned this out, but—it needs to be asked. Not that she thinks Alex will ever ask her, and maybe she’ll be fine after this, completely fine. Kara is in no way asking because her gut feels like a tangled up ball of electrified wires at the mere idea that Alex might “need” her again (although she doesn’t _need Kara_ , she just might need Kara’s pheromones; nothing at all to do with the person attached to them, Alex is in no way into her nor has she expressed any hint that she might be) and she wants to lay that feeling to rest once and for all. “Is this—“ _No. Bad._ “How did this happen? Is this going to happen again?” Kara kicks herself. 

Alex either doesn’t pick up on or simply ignores Kara’s extremely obviously thirsty phrasing. She sinks down onto the bed. Kara’s nerves get the better of her and she keeps talking. 

“I mean—” 

Alex raises one hand. _Stop_. Kara’s mouth clicks shut. She sits down on the bed next to Alex, chastened. 

Alex sighs and buries her face in her hands. “I don’t know.” She says through her fingers. She sounds so tired and defeated that Kara has to curl her hands into fists in her lap to keep from reaching out. “Maggie’s been on me this whole time to hit you up.” Huh. “She’s right. I’m just gonna say it was just this one time, try and go back to “normal”, and end up right back here again.” She buries her face even further in her hands. 

Kara breathes a small internal sigh of relief. Maggie has Alex’s back. She’s not sure if anything _she_ says will come across in a neutral light, but if Alex is listening to a friend... 

That’s really all she can ask for. 

Kara hadn’t done any research, before the mating assignment. But afterwards—over the last few weeks, specifically—Kara’s started digging through the sources she has available to her—and as someone in Biosciences, just slightly to the left of Medical, that’s a lot, although she’s mostly a researcher for things like artificial grav and atmosphere, and, hazily, the ever-changing list of “potentially viable” planets. 

But she wanted to understand what Alex might be going through. And, about as realistically as a “potentially viable” planet becoming “viable”—although much less hazily, the more she researched—if there was some way Kara, sperm donor and awkward three-night stand, might be able to help. 

Which was stupid, because it’s not like childcare was an issue—hello, government repopulation program—and it’s not like healthcare was an issue either. They didn’t want to screw this up and lose any more of their (trained and skilled) population either. 

Literally, all they had done was a transaction based on what was supposedly genetic calculus but the algorithm had proven useless decades ago, so it was literally just names matched off a list. 

It was just a randomized transaction. 

“Here.” Kara pulls her comm chip out of her boot and presents the face of it to Alex. Alex grabs hers from the small shelf next to her bunk and taps it against Kara’s. There’s a brief flash on both screens and a chime as their data is exchanged and a connection is established. “I don’t _expect_ you to call me, or anything, but… if you think it’ll help… It’s the least I can do.” Pause. “Actually, it’s kind of the only thing I can do.” 

Alex laughs at that. Kara grins, and then laughs, too, relieved. 

“Don’t sell yourself short.” Alex says after, still grinning crookedly, almost shyly. Kara’s heart swells in her chest. 

Kara clears her throat, painfully aware that she’s just sitting here, on Alex’s bed, and she should go before she overstays her welcome. “I should go.” 

Alex nods, that crooked smile fading, making Kara’s chest hurt. “I’ll… let you know if anything comes up.” Alex promises, the words sounding new and awkward in her mouth. She looks a bit sheepish. 

Kara has the odd urge to pull Alex in and kiss her and never leave. She settles for smiling at her, which is easier than it sounds, mostly because smiling at Alex is easy, and she might— _might_ —see her again. “Take care of yourself.” She can’t stop herself from trying to get one more word in. 

Alex’s face wrinkles in a familiar disgust, and Kara laughs, because if Alex is feeling good enough to make that face, she’s going to be okay, and Alex starts laughing with her after a moment, too. 

//

Alex lasts three days. Then, Kara gets a text. _Come over?_

Alex isn’t as pale or clammy as she was last time, but she’s shiver-y and small and kinda green, hunched up on the edge of the bunk. Kara lets her brow knit, lets her worry show a little, and she’s still not quite sure how this whole “pheromone” thing works and now people are able to like, have entire conversations with each other in pheromones or whatever, but she feels something unwind in her when she sees Alex, and she thinks that that might be radiating out of her pores. Alex unburies her face from her hands, her face smoothing with relief, but it can’t hide the strain on her face. She stands up and walks right into Kara’s arms. Kara just wraps her arms around Alex and holds her, Alex a solid weight against her chest. It feels so nice that she doesn’t realize it might be a little weird for… a long time, it feels like, where all she’s focused on is Alex’s warmth and her scent, the strength of Alex’s arms around her and the shape of her under her hands, the way she breathes, letting out deeper breaths as tension unspools from her body. 

Alex seems to realize that this is a little familiar for them at the same time Kara does, and they pull back at practically the same time. Alex looks away, running a hand through her hair. 

“Hey,” Kara says. 

Alex glances back at her, face softening. “Hey.” A hint of a smile crosses her face. 

“I’m sorry you’re feeling bad.” 

Alex makes a face. “Yeah, well.” She shrugs. 

It’s weirdly eloquent-but-not-eloquent at the same time, and Kara can’t help but smile. “Yeah.” 

The silence that follows isn’t completely comfortable, but it’s not awkward either. Kara counts that as a net improvement. 

Like a moron, Kara has to break it. “So, what did you wanna do?” 

Alex looks panicked for a moment, and then relaxes into “struggling for words”. She shrugs again. “I don’t know. Whatever.” 

“You called me here just to give you a hug, huh.” 

Alex makes a face at her and smacks her shoulder. “Shut up.” Kara laughs. Alex rolls her eyes, grinning. “God, I hope you don’t get along with Maggie.” She says after a moment, still smiling, but making Kara cringe internally as she’s suddenly reminded of how Alex caught her reaction to another pretty omega. “I’ll never fucking rest again.” 

Strangely, Alex doesn’t seem worried about that; it seems like just a one-off comment about how apparently Maggie makes her life miserable. 

Kara thinks this probably means Maggie is pretty great. 

“I mean… if you have other stuff you want to do, we can put up one of the other bunks as a couch and you can, I don’t know, work? Or whatever you want to do.” 

Alex considers. “Okay.” She nods, and that’s the end of the matter. 

Alex is stubborn about setting up the futon and dragging a small table over, which leaves Kara to grab the pillows and blankets. Alex frowns slightly, but says nothing. Kara breathes a sigh of relief. 

Alex sets up a tablet and looks like she’s getting set to work. Kara’s trying to fight through some of the results of her lab’s latest testing when Alex nudges at Kara’s side and grumbles something. Kara lifts her arm to make room for Alex against her side, resigning herself to getting absolutely no reading done. 

Alex types for a little bit, but she starts relaxing against Kara little by little, and the sounds of her typing are fewer and farther between. 

Finally, Alex’s head is resting against Kara’s shoulder, and Kara’s fairly certain Alex is asleep. 

She pulls the body pillow next to her close enough to lean against, but it kind of tends to fall over rather than sit in a stable pile. So, Kara resigns herself to developing a full-body cramp to avoid waking Alex up. 

At least until she falls asleep. 

//

Of _course_ she wakes up hard in the middle of the night. 

Stupid hormones giving her morning wood. 

Kara surreptitiously maneuvers her groin away from Alex, and then escapes to the bathroom. 

This is not a problem Kara is used to having when she’s just… staying over, outside of her rut. At least during her ruts it’s clear what she needs to do with it, and she’s with someone who volunteered. With Alex… her body is embarrassingly attuned to Alex’s, and Alex’s body is producing a _lot _of hormones and pheromones, and apparently as a reaction Kara’s body has decided that it needs to be ready to knot Alex. Which…__

__Okay, it’s not like Kara hasn’t been thinking about it _all the time_ —the way Alex felt during their assignment, the way she looked, under her or on top of her or bent over or on her knees or in that tub, practically weightless, their skin pressed even closer together by the water—_ _

__And now, the way Alex’s skin feels almost electric when Kara’s comes into contact with it, and there’s more of that feeling from her rut, like she could just press her lips to Alex’s skin, anywhere on her body, and fall forever into her, and it’s not scary anymore, it’s perfection. And when Kara _does_ touch Alex for a long time, even just her arm resting on Alex’s, or spooning her from behind, Kara could swear she feels something in Alex relax in the same way. She could swear that she _feels_ , down in her bones, how soft Alex would be for her, how wet, and it’s exactly as time-stopping as Alex’s pheromones during her rut, but it’s _different_ , too. _ _

__And she _knows_ , too, that Alex responds to her, at least physiologically. It curbs her symptoms. It’s a _fact_. _ _

__But that doesn’t mean Alex actually wants anything to do with Kara sexually. And, fuck, this is so fucked up. This whole program, this whole situation. Being around a lot of betas, or polar genera-types who work and primarily interact with betas and live in the beta-world, Kara has always tended toward the beta attitude where she’s “better than her base instincts”. She’s in control. She makes her choices. She’s not at the mercy of her biology. She can take a pill, or a shot, and she can do what she needs to; there’s a whole science—all of science, really—dedicated to adapting humans to their environment, to better thrive in it. Hell, it’s why they’re in _space_ right now. Ingenuity and abstraction and _vision_ is as much a human evolutionary feature as their need for water or oxygen, or the fact that people don’t have tails or need appendixes. _ _

__But then, she’s also here, in this… mess. She knows exactly how the government triangulated this, these momentary pairings, these carefully-engineered systems of support—_ _

__But it feels like a car crash in an old-Earth movie, the collision of this supposed detachment, the involuntary nature of the program, and… them. She’s tangled up with Alex, and nothing the government or Biosciences says or does can make that different._ _

__She could take pheromone blockers, suppressants. She could detach herself. She could make this stop. She hasn’t. It could, conceivably, hurt Alex in the long run, if it cuts off the production of whatever hormone Alex’s system is homing in on._ _

__But even more, she likes the pleasure of being close to her. She likes how it feels to hold Alex in her arms—it’s even better than she remembered from their assignment._ _

__But even though Alex asked her to be here, even though this _helps_ Alex, her enjoyment still feels like a violation. _ _

__Kara sighs, sagging against the sink. She doesn’t know how her aunt did it so well, go through the program so many times, with so many people._ _

__//_ _

__It’s Kara who brings up the idea of the shirt; it occurs to her when she’s in the bathroom. It doesn’t really make her feel better, though. Just a different kind of anxious._ _

__Alex is most of the way awake when Kara comes out of the bathroom, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. She grumbles half a question at Kara and Kara, on reflex, reaches for her hand, only somewhat soothed by the fact that Alex reaches back and tangles their fingers together. Slowly, they move to the bed, and Alex is settled in alongside her, just like she did a few nights ago._ _

__She finds herself stammering through an explanation in the dark of Alex’s suite. “I mean—if that would be alright with your job. If the issue is pheromones. I don’t know how long it’d help for, and maybe people would notice and say something, but—“_ _

__Alex’s voice is rough with sleep, but sounds surprisingly alert. “If anyone gives me shit, they know I’ll give it right back.”_ _

__Kara badly wishes she could be there and equally as terrifying to back her up._ _

__Kara feels Alex nod against her. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea.” She moves so that she’s looking at Kara in the dim light from the bathroom. “Care if I steal your shirt?”_ _

__Kara doesn’t, and so the next morning, when she comes out of the bathroom after waking up with yet another... hormonal reaction, she comes out to Alex standing there shirtless, bra and BDUs, and she finds herself unable to stop herself from just *looking*, for a moment, and she doesn’t think Alex is *showing* yet—it hasn’t been long enough, has it? Unless that barely-there bump is more than one baby, some part of Kara comes back with._ _

__Kara feels a strong pull between her forehead and her palm._ _

__Alex interrupts Kara’s mortified reverie by holding out her hand expectantly. Kara stares blankly for a few moments, bemusedly looking at Alex’s eyes and absolutely nowhere else on her extremely shirtless upper body, until Alex’s eyebrow cocks. “Your undershirt?” She prompts._ _

__“Right!” Kara starts fumbling her shirt over her head. She’s going to have to hustle back to her bunk._ _

__//_ _

__The shirt idea works, and Alex takes to stealing Kara’s shirts. Kara takes to wearing one to bed for a few nights at a time so that Alex can cycle through the ones she has and Kara doesn’t keep running out of shirts._ _

__Kara expects the number of times Alex asks her to come over to decrease. Weirdly, that doesn’t seem to happen. Kara doesn’t know how to ask Alex—she’s not even sure _what_ she wants to ask Alex. Alex smiles at her sometimes like she’s glad to see her. It makes Kara’s chest feel full and warm. It’s hard to feel bad about that when Alex seems genuinely happy. _ _

__//_ _

__Not too long after the shirt hypothesis is confirmed, Kara wakes up pressed against Alex’s back, Alex a warm bundle of soft skin and sleepy scent wrapped up in her arms. And, of course, after a moment, she realizes her hard-on is pressing kind of between Alex’s thighs._ _

__She starts carefully withdrawing her hips, and then she stops, because there’s this odd tension in Alex’s body, and Kara realizes after a moment that Alex might be awake. And she wants to melt into the sheets, a little, but also, she can suddenly hear Alex’s breathing, shallow, not quick but not deep and relaxed either. It makes Kara’s heart pound._ _

__“Alex.” Kara whispers._ _

__There’s a moment of silence, but then— “Yeah.” Alex’s voice is rough and rusty and it could be sleep, but something about it makes Kara flush with heat, and makes her knot swell even more against Alex’s thighs. Kara feels light-headed from embarrassment and from the blood redirecting southward._ _

__“I, um, I’m… gonna move.” Kara says, fighting through the embarrassment._ _

__“Don’t.” Alex says quickly. Kara’s stomach tangles. “I mean… Don’t. You don’t have to. I mean—Fuck,” She swears, and then Kara almost whimpers as Alex’s leg slides back over hers, tangling them together. Kara’s arms around Alex tighten and squeeze on instinct, and she buries her face in Alex’s shoulder. Alex feels just this side of limp in her arms, and that shallow fast breathing is hard to mistake._ _

__“Alex,” She whispers again. Any other words stick in her throat. “Do you…?”_ _

__“I mean fuck me.” It would sound harsher if Alex’s voice wasn’t shaking. A sound catches in Kara’s throat. She’s already so close, knot all surrounded by the heat of Alex’s body. Her hands slide up under Alex’s shirt, fingers slipping under the waistband of Alex’s shorts._ _

__There’s some short movements, and their clothes are lost, mostly kicked down the bed under the covers. Alex’s shirt is flung on the floor off to the side of the bed. Kara missed the rail of the bunk and her shirt is past the top of the bed on the floor somewhere. Kara breathes fully for what feels like the first time in a long time when she feels their skin sliding together, familiar heat, familiar scent, weight and pressure and softness that she _missed_ , she has to have, for it to feel this good. _ _

__Her hand slides up to cup Alex’s breast, thumb sliding over the nipple tentatively. Alex’s breath catches beautifully, and then she’s breathing hard, and her hand moves to grip Kara’s thigh, and Kara feels dizzy with it, the way she can scent the surge of Alex’s arousal, the way Alex is limp in her arms, the way her knot is hard and pounding and it aches, when she can feel the soft vulnerable skin of Alex’s inner thighs, feel her sex, and Kara feels dizzy with the flow of blood there, the sense of power—and when Kara chooses to wait, to hold off, her knot pounds harder with her heartbeat and it’s delicious, being this close and keeping her knot outside of Alex._ _

__And it’s delicious, too, the way Alex moves even though Kara’s hands are only on her breast, gentle and careful. Kara buries her face against Alex’s shoulder, mouthing at it, scraping her teeth._ _

__When she turns her head and scrapes her teeth against Alex’s neck and patiently softly rubs her thumb over Alex’s nipple again, letting the motion tug lightly with the presence of her index finger, Alex moans, her hips grinding down, and then she catches her breath and comes, soft cry and shuddering in Kara’s arms, and Kara sees white behind her eyelids._ _

__And she knows it’s only this easy because of Alex’s pregnancy, but it’s addictive, the way Alex’s nails in her shoulders during their assignment was addictive, the way Alex letting go and coming under her was addictive, and Kara wants _more_ , so she doesn’t stop, and Alex lasts maybe thirty seconds between orgasms, if that. _ _

__“Kara,” Alex gasps, “Kara, inside, please.”_ _

__It takes long enough and patience enough that Kara feels like she’s hit a meditative state by the time she’s halfway inside, breathing and easing in and feeling and aching and listening to Alex’s body, the way she breathes, when she rolls her hips down and takes more of Kara in, when she pulls up. Time stops functioning for Kara._ _

__It feels every bit as amazing as she thought it would._ _

__It takes time, but when Kara can fuck her properly—slowly—Alex is responsive and vocal, arching her back and spreading herself and _wanton_ , twitching and clinging on each stroke of Kara’s hips and Kara didn’t even feel this powerful during Alex’s heat, or this _right_. _ _

__Kara isn’t worried about hurting her, really—until she feels her knot start to stretch Alex’s cunt, until she’s well and truly filled Alex up and then some, and there’s only the straining press of Alex’s body around hers, and Kara’s knot keeps swelling—and it was _pleasurable_ , in heat, but Kara feels a frisson of fear that it’s not going to be like that now when she realizes what kind of strain she could be putting on Alex’s body. _ _

__Alex’s breath stops, though, and her body bows, her head tilting back against Kara’s cheek at such a sharp angle and grinding into the pillow in a way that Kara _knows_ ; knows her eyes are rolling back in her head, if Kara could see them, knows Alex’s neck is bared and arched sharply, the extremest and deepest submission, and Alex can’t tie her, properly, but she comes, powerful and dizzying, around Kara’s knot. Kara bites down on Alex’s shoulder to muffle her own cry, clutching at Alex’s hips as Alex’s body pulls her release out of her. _ _

__Alex doesn’t even seem to mind, although Kara feels shock run through her when she realizes that she isn’t sure how hard she bit down. Alex hand fumbles for Kara’s, and their joined hands land firmly around Alex’s front, both of them shuddering and breathless. Alex’s hand presses against the back of Kara’s, though, almost like she’s urging Kara to open her hand a little more on the more-than-barely-there swell of Alex’s belly, and Kara can’t even hold the thought in her head._ _

__//_ _

__They manage a disjointed, muddled conversation while they’re tied, between when they start to catch their breath and when Kara’s hand finds its way down between Alex’s legs and Alex is wild and insensate and Kara is hard inside her and hanging on for dear life, somewhere between this is it, she’s going to die, and not even knowing how to stop._ _

__In quieter moments, Kara’s mouth finds Alex’s ear, or licks her way down Alex’s neck, or Alex twists in Kara’s arms just enough to bite at Kara’s lower lip. In quieter moments, Kara lives entirely inside Alex, and exists only where she’s touching her. At some point, Alex fumbles for her comm and calls in sick to work, and it’s not until after Kara’s had a chance to catch her breath much, much later that she realizes what exactly happened._ _

__Once Kara’s knot gives, Alex turns over and wraps her leg around Kara’s waist and kisses her dizzyingly until Kara is hard again, and tugs with her leg until Kara rolls them over and slides back inside her again, reveling in the way Alex arches back against the mattress with a sound so uninhibited and full of feeling that Kara doesn’t know how this is the same person who grumps at her and refuses her help—but it doesn’t matter, because she knows now. She knows Alex wants to share this with her. Alex is letting her see this. Alex wants this. Alex has _told_ her this. _ _

__Alex’s fingernails break the skin of Kara’s back when they come, and Kara’s muscles are jumping from the strain after._ _

__Water is easier to clean up than sheets, at this point, so they move to the bathroom, which features a jacuzzi that was literally designed with fucking in mind._ _

__And this time, Alex lets Kara wash her after, too._ _

__//_ _

__Everything after that is a haze from which Kara never quite manages to emerge, even at work, for… months. Kara loses track of days. Thankfully, her work lets her rotate to a less intensive role. She’s never in her bunk, which she shares with two other people anyways. She’s almost always over at Alex’s._ _

__Maggie’s over at Alex’s a lot, too. And to Alex’s chagrin, Maggie and Kara get along fantastically. Maggie is very straight with Kara about the fact that her and Alex are _that kind_ of friends, and Kara—who, if she’s willing to admit, gets exhausted from meeting Alex’s needs sometimes—is happy to share that. She’s happy Alex isn’t alone. _ _

__She’s happy she _adds_ something to Alex’s life, not just filling a hole. _ _

__Eventually, (sooner rather than later) Alex figures out what it does to Kara to see her wearing one of Kara’s shirts, her belly filling them out, starting to stretch them just a little—a little more every time Kara sees her, it feels like. Alex and Maggie tease her about it until Kara pulls Alex in and nibbles on her neck or shoulder, sometimes bruising or leaving imprints of teeth, but careful not to mark. "Careful"—that's a word. Fragile, even._ _

__But even if it feels fragile, it also feels so _good_. And when it's good, it feels strong and alive, like Alex's suite, their little space, has become their tiny little bubble in the middle of the void. And Kara understands, suddenly, why people use the phrase "their world". It always sounded so trite, a bunch of people loudly proclaiming a term that, to them, is just an _idea_ , something that most of them have never known. _ _

__But to Kara, suddenly everything truly does spin around this room. And when her feet touch the ground of it, the polarity and the strength of it is undeniable._ _

__//_ _

__Kara comes over one week to find Maggie curled up next to Alex, face buried in her neck._ _

__She can smell heat as soon as she walks into the room. The bundle on Alex’s bed is slightly larger than if it was just Alex under the covers._ _

__It makes sense almost immediately, and Kara’s tempted to turn right around and go back to her bunk. Omega heats can sometimes be calmed by spending time around a pregnant omega. They’re friends. And Kara knows that Alex and Maggie have “comforted” each other a few times before._ _

__“Hey, you,” Alex’s head turns towards Kara and the door. “Come here.”_ _

__“Me?” Kara stammers slightly._ _

__“Who else would I be talking to?”_ _

__Kara climbs in on the far side of Maggie, as indicated by Alex. She settles against Maggie’s back, spooning close. Maggie squirms back against her slightly, and Kara’s heart rate jumps._ _

__Under the blankets, the scent of heat is even stronger. Kara’s clit, which already feels semi-permanently like a knot, pulses and grows._ _

__“Let her take care of you,” Alex murmurs to Maggie from Maggie’s other side. “She’s really good at it.”_ _

__Kara’s heart stutters, unexpectedly soaring, not quite able to believe what she’s hearing. “I am?”_ _

__Alex and Maggie both laugh. Alex’s hand finds the back of her neck and tugs; Kara pushes up on her forearm to kiss Alex. Alex is smiling into the kiss._ _

__“You left an impression,” Alex says, all cool and understated, as she pulls away._ _

__Kara is a mess of feelings now. “Don’t— That’s a terrible pun.”_ _

__Alex and Maggie both laugh again. Kara cracks a smile with them._ _

__“Careful,” Maggie teases Alex, “You’ll scare her off.”_ _

__“She can take it.” Alex says casually, shooting a grin at Kara, her eyes soft in that same cool and understated way, and Kara’s entire body vibrates with joy at the pronouncement._ _

__“What about me?” Maggie says, coyly, her voice suddenly directed at Kara and a few notes lower and softer. “Can you take me?”_ _

__Kara’s body’s enthusiastic response has Maggie laughing and Kara blushing and hiding her face in Maggie’s hair._ _

__//_ _

__

__It can’t last._ _

__Kara catches herself daydreaming—about the babies. About after. She’s so high on all of it that it never really occurs to her to check herself. And after all—the logistics are taken care of. Right?_ _

__But Alex—Alex isn’t the maternal type. This is something Kara knows. In her daydreams, she figures it’s okay, because Maggie is. But if she had ever tried to consider any of that in reality, it wouldn’t even have held up to a cursory inspection, no matter how adamantly Maggie admitted that she wanted a family._ _

__After all, Kara managed to get Maggie pregnant, too._ _

__It doesn’t help that everything is so… accommodating, it feels like._ _

__In hindsight, it wasn’t a “one day she walked in and” thing. Reality was bound to come crashing back in sometime. Alex’s smile, the one that’s worked its way into Kara’s dreams and most of her waking life, the one that she doesn’t show outside of her time with Kara and Maggie—well, it doesn’t really exist outside of her time with either of them. Alex is guarded and careful. Kara notices that the days she goes back to her own bunk, she can hardly sleep at all, unless Alex and Maggie both have ridden her hard. Her bunk feels cold and empty and her bunkmates, who she’s lived with for years now, feel like strangers. Kara thinks about holding them after they're born, or what they’re going to look like, if their eyes will turn out blue like Kara’s or brown like Alex’s._ _

__But they never _talk_ about anything: What Alex wants to do, if she even wants to keep them herself or give them to another family. If Alex decides to give them away, there’s a good chance Kara would still get a chance to be involved in their lives, even if the family that adopts them is on another ship. _ _

__But it feels weird to ask. In some ways, Kara doesn’t feel like she has the right to ask. She’s just kind of… an accessory to this process. She’s happy to be._ _

__But the process is so all-consuming, so intense, and in hindsight, that should’ve been a sign. Kara realizes she’s infatuated long before she realizes what that means, or that maybe, she should care _why_. _ _

__Of course, it’s Alex who realizes what that means first._ _

__Alex’s sadness isn’t totally unexpected; her relationship with her mom is closer now than before, and Alex is vulnerable—to her mom’s judgment, to her distance, her inconsistency and unevenness, that she’s tried to be independent from for so long. Smooshing their lives closer together again, even if her mom is strangely happy and supportive, exposes all kinds of raw edges and unhealed wounds, and Alex is vulnerable to all of it._ _

__And, Kara knows, Alex isn’t one hundred percent uncertainty-free about this. None of them are, even Maggie._ _

__Still, it blindsides Kara more than a little bit. She hadn’t thought… Well, she hadn’t thought. About the science of it, ironically. Why they’re all suddenly so close._ _

__Kara comes home—that’s what they’ve started calling it now—and finds Alex sitting on the edge of the bunk, looking raw and broken._ _

__“You’re just helping me.” Alex says, numbly, after not much coaxing from Kara, and it’s not an accusation; it’s just a statement. Still, it lances through Kara, and she wants to protest, even though she knows she shouldn’t, because isn’t that what she signed up for? “Once this is over…” She gestures at herself. “You’ll lose interest.”_ _

__Kara’s world inverts so fast it’s like someone switched the grav polarity from the floor to the ceiling in her head._ _

__She understands _exactly_ what Alex means. Alex means what Kara meant about pheromones, all those months ago. _ _

__Everything comes to a complete screeching halt._ _

__Kara sinks down onto the bed next to Alex, reeling. “Alex, I…” Suddenly, it’s like Kara’s forgotten how to form sentences. She curses herself internally for letting her mental sharpness slip, caught up in all of this. “Alex, I—I mean, maybe I _started out_ trying to help you, but I think… I think it’s gone a bit too far for that. I don’t think that’s gonna happen.” _ _

__Alex looks at her, eyes glittering and aching, and Kara owes Alex every last bit of honesty and reassurance she has. “Tell me this has absolutely nothing to do with pheromones, or hormones, or fucking—“ She makes an angry gesture with her hands. “The only reason you’re back in my life is because I got _sick_. Because I _needed_ you.” _ _

__“I think I stayed for more than that.” Kara says softly, but inside, she knows she can’t say with a hundred percent certainty that it’s one thing or another. It’s too blurry. They’re too undefined—they’re not dating, they haven’t talked enough about that, and Kara’s been too busy _feeling_ good to worry or ask about what they _are_. _ _

__And if she’s honest, she hasn’t wanted to think about it. Ever since Alex told her she wanted her, pulled her back in—_ _

__But what was that driven by, after all? And it’s not like it’s going to be easy after the babies are born._ _

__Does she really have what this requires?_ _

__“Alex,” She asks, suddenly feeling like her throat is closing, “What are you saying?”_ _

__“I’m saying... You _have_ helped me. You’ve seen me…” Alex struggles for the words, and Kara flashes on all of it—washing Alex's hair, talking to her after difficult conversations with her mom, holding her on the couch—hell, even the first time Kara came over, to help Alex with a hormonal reaction that just wouldn’t quit. “You’ve done things I couldn’t have done on my own. I could _never_ have done on my own. The only person who’s ever done that for me is Maggie, and she’s just… she’s _Maggie_. _ _

__“I thought I could let you help me and then let you walk away, but I can’t. If you do, I don’t… I don’t know what I’m going to do.” She says. “I hate this.”_ _

__“I’m sorry.” Comes Kara’s standard response._ _

__Alex is right. She _doesn’t_ know how she’ll feel after all of this. She’s gotten so far in over her head. _ _

__But the more she thinks about it, the more she thinks she doesn’t want to get out._ _

__But she knows how all of that can just… change, with a few drops of one chemical or another. What does she know for sure, really?_ _

__“I’ve never done this before.” Kara says. “And you’re right, I don’t know if—if this is real. If it’ll last after…” She shrugs. Alex regards her, eyes so sad; no judgment, just hurt, or the expectation of hurt. “I don’t want it to stop.” She admits. “And I don’t care if it’s a chemical trick. Because I still love waking up next to you. I still miss you when I don’t. I want to see this through all the way to the end, whatever that is. I’m okay with it.”_ _

__Alex looks away, but not before Kara sees so many things flKara through her eyes—want, softness, pain. She looks down at her lap, then up again. “I don’t know if I am.” She admits._ _

__Kara feels like someone just shoved something solid into her chest. “Oh.”_ _

__Alex looks back at her for a moment, then away. “Yeah.”_ _

__That wasn’t something Kara had ever considered._ _

__“Well.” She struggles to find the right words. “Just… whatever you need. Let me know. I want to be there for you.” Suddenly, she’s fighting not to cry._ _

__//_ _

__The worst part is that they don’t really _stop_. They had a painful emotional conversation… and then kept going. But now, Kara’s brain is busily spinning up all these scenarios in her mind, wondering if it’s right for them to keep going—unable, on some level, to really stop. She doesn’t _want_ to stop. _ _

__But now, it matters _why_. Why she’s doing this. Why she wants to be close to Alex. _ _

__Maybe they could—Kara thinks suppressants would still probably shut the process down for herself—but she hasn’t done that, she hasn’t even started the process for that, and while Alex calls Kara over maybe less often than before, she doesn’t _stop_ calling Kara, either. _ _

__But the tone of those evenings is still noticeably different. And when Kara is by herself, either in her bunk, which is suddenly a lot more lived-in, or at work—_ _

__Now _she_ feels sick. Sick and sad. Is this right or honest of her, keeping things going like this? Does Alex just need time? Does _she_ need time? _ _

__Alex calls her less and less often, and when she does, she’s… distracted. It doesn’t help that she can’t get very comfortable anymore, even with Kara and, like, three body pillows in various configurations._ _

__With Alex and Maggie is the only way that Kara really sleeps, anymore. But more often than not, Kara finds herself lying awake next to Alex, looking at the curve of jawline that’s become so familiar to her, or the rest of her, and feeling equal parts fierce and helpless._ _

__Because suddenly, it’s back to square one, and even her feelings are lying to her._ _

__//_ _

__Kara should’ve _eased_ back into field work. Not like it would’ve prevented this from happening, but maybe she would’ve been better prepared for it. _ _

__Not like you can _prepare_ for getting blown through a hull breach into the vacuum in an experiment that’s gone wrong due to factors beyond anyone’s control—namely, the structural integrity of the ship’s hull that Kara and her partners were working in. The same thing that killed Alex’s dad, Kara thinks. _ _

__She doesn’t have the time or energy left to really appreciate the irony of that._ _

__The cold is already blistering, and the breath is actively being ripped out of Kara’s lungs by the vacuum. She slaps the “Deploy” button on the emergency evac suit on her chest as the fingers of her other hand start to slip._ _

__The suit isn’t fully deployed before she’s past what’s left of the bulkhead, but it’s only fractions of a second after that before she’s sealed in. Warmth and oxygen floods the suit._ _

__Still, it’s not good._ _

__There’s no propulsion systems in the unit, so she’s left floating until someone can come grab her. She doesn’t have very long; an hour, maybe, at maximum._ _

__And she’s fighting to stay awake. She knows better than to let her eyes close, but somehow, every few seconds, she finds herself forcing them back open. The suit can’t keep her warm forever; she’s _cold_ , and getting colder. The skin that got more exposure than the rest of her is prickling, pins-and-needles, not quite able to get warm enough to restore all the blood flow, but not quite freezing, either. She should be looking for her team, she thinks. They all had suits. Most of them were in far better practice than her with them. _ _

__Kara can’t force her eyes to focus._ _

__After what feels like a long, long time, she sees a space suit with a propulsion system and a cord tying them back to the ship moving towards her. She reaches for them._ _

__She blacks out._ _

__//_ _

__Kara realizes she isn’t dead when she realizes that that goddamn heart monitor sound is making her tense up with annoyance._ _

__Her next thought is _Alex_. _ _

__For some reason, she doesn’t expect to find Alex there, although—that assumes that she moves. More accurately, Alex is in the room, but out of Kara’s immediate line of sight, and Kara’s mom and her aunt and even her _dad_ , putting up with her mom long enough to see Kara. _ _

__It’s only after Kara’s shooed her family out that she spies Alex, looking pale and worried._ _

__“Hey.” Kara croaks. “You came.”_ _

__Alex takes a few steps closer, her expression pained, and then amused, and then sad. “Of course I did.” She says, a slight smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Asshole.”_ _

__“Sorry.” Kara says automatically._ _

__“Yeah, well, you should be.” Alex moves until she’s standing next to the bed Kara’s in. She plucks at the shoulder of Kara’s shirt. “Maggie’s on shift.” Alex says. “ _She’s_ handling this like a pro.” Alex reverts to her usual disgruntlement._ _

__Kara laughs as well as she can. She’s really tired._ _

__“Hey,” Kara says, fumbling for Alex’s hand. She misses horribly—her motor coordination is all kinds of off. Alex takes pity on her and moves her arm so Kara’s hand lands on it. “Come here. I want to hold you.”_ _

__Alex looks shaken and her eyes are glittering. Kara shifts onto her other side to make room for her. Alex comes and carefully lays down, kicking off her shoes. Kara doesn’t waste any time, settling in right against Alex’s back, nuzzling into the back of her neck, hand curling protectively over Alex’s belly._ _

__“I love you,” Kara sighs without even meaning to. Alex goes stiff._ _

__Then she relaxes. Alex laces her fingers through Kara’s and pulls their hands up to her mouth._ _

__“You too,” Alex murmurs against Kara’s hand._ _

__It takes a lot of effort, but Kara wets her lips and forces the words out. “When I get out of here, can we talk?”_ _

__“Sure.” Alex’s voice is small and fragile._ _

__“I want to do this.” Kara says. It seems so important to get out._ _

__Alex brings Kara’s hand up to her lips again. “Rest. Talk when you’re better.” As if on cue, Kara feels herself starting to drift off to the sound of the monitors._ _

__As she’s drifting off, she thinks she hears Alex’s voice: “So do I.”_ _


End file.
